


mood indigo

by Polexia_Aphrodite



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 1920s, 1930s, M/M, Pre-Serum, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 09:52:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1506164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polexia_Aphrodite/pseuds/Polexia_Aphrodite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Bucky, and how it might have begun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mood indigo

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little headcanon in the form of a story, regarding how the relationship between Steve and Bucky might have come to be in the context of the MCU. As a warning, this story does deal, in a consensual and not-terribly-explicit way, with teenage sexuality.
> 
> Hope you guys like it.

Joseph Rogers looms large over the Barnes family. Or, rather, his memory does. Bucky only knows him through the stories his father tells, usually after too many drinks, and through a handful of photographs of the two of them as eager young doughboys, with crooked caps and confident smiles and their arms wrapped tight around each others shoulders. They had trained and shipped out together, landing in France in the spring of 1918, dizzy with excitement and ready to be made into heroes. But Joseph had been cut down straight away at Cantigny – crying out as mustard gas seeped through a faulty mask. 

Bucky had never known his father before the war – he’d barely been a year old when he’d left – only after. He doesn’t recognize his father’s sunken cheeks and hollow eyes in the photographs he sees of the rosy, happy man next to Joseph Rogers. He still cuts a fine figure though – his hair slick and dark with brilliantine, dressed in olive drab with a line of brass buttons and a block of colorful ribbon bars on his chest. The sight of him fills Bucky with love.

What’s left of Joseph Rogers, after the gas burned him up, is an orphaned family – a widow, Sarah, and a son called Steve. Bucky’s mother spends a lot of time with Steve’s. Even though the Barnes’ can afford tailors and department store clothes, his mother sews with Sarah Rogers, their heads bowed together, talking in low tones over cups of hot coffee.

But it’s Steve who draws most of Bucky’s father’s concern. Bucky had come up strong and healthy, with baby fat to spare, but Steve stayed thin and pale, small for his age, with fine blond hair and an open, honest kind of face. One night, Bucky’s father gathers him into his arms and says, with the earthy scent of beer on his breath, “You’ve got to look out for Steve, y’hear? Those’re orders.” Bucky nods against his shoulder and promises.

Bucky likes Steve, though, which makes watching over him a hell of a lot easier. He’s small and sickly – with bad lungs and a bad heart, always wheezing and going pale in a way that worries Bucky too much – but he isn’t _frail_. He doesn’t back down from anything, from fights he can’t win or arguments where he’s sure he’s right. Bucky’s the same way, but seeing it on a guy as little as Steve makes Bucky think he might be made of stronger stuff. It helps that Steve’s got a wicked sense of humor, too – dark and edgy and sarcastic. He’s got a chip on his shoulder a mile wide, and a sharp comeback for anyone who dares to pick on his secondhand clothes or short stature, even if most of his remarks are paid back in bloody noses and black eyes.

Bucky’s not always around to fight Steve’s battles, but when he’s unlucky enough to find Steve nursing his wounds in a back alley, Bucky learns how to patch him up and brew up cover stories so their mothers won’t worry. He patches Steve up with plaster bandages, stuffs cotton balls up his leaking nose, and takes them out for ice cream sodas. He never _forgets_ the promise he’d made to his father, but after a while looking out for Steve becomes a thing that’s entirely his own. It becomes natural, like muscle memory, to have Steve at his side.

Years pass and Bucky fills out; he gets taller and stronger. His voice cracks and deepens, he starts to shave, and his body hums with unspent energy. He gets better at settling the fights Steve’s mouth picks. Steve changes, too – gets a little taller, if not much bigger, sheds his baby face in favor of a stronger jawline and a furrowed brow.

When he’s too beat up to go home, Steve stays at the Barnes’. Bucky and Steve line up couch cushions on the Barnes’ parquet into something like a double bed and pile them high with blankets and pillows. And some nights, Steve’ll say something stupid, and Bucky’ll laugh at him and say something stupider just to wind him up. Steve lunges at him trying to pin him with his hands around Bucky’s wrists and one bony knee pressed to his chest. 

Bucky always lets him win for a little while, because there’s something sort of nice about being that near to someone, about seeing Steve close up. There’s something pretty about his face – though Bucky knows Steve would deck him if he ever knew he thought so. He’s got delicate features: long, dark eyelashes, clear blue eyes and a full, pink mouth. But even so, the hard angle of his jaw, the line of his shoulders, and the slight, honey-colored stubble over his upper lip is solidly masculine.

Bucky always lets him win for a little while, before he flips them both, pressing Steve into the cushions with the whole length of his body. Steve smiles, a little breathlessly, and accepts defeat. Steve’s warm and real underneath him. His breath is hot on Bucky’s face. His eyes go a little bright and his cheeks turn a little pink. Bucky can feel every inch of him – the press of his flat belly, the jutting ridges of his hipbones, the soft bulge between his legs pressing against Bucky’s hip through layers of fabric. 

After that, Bucky rolls off him, socks him in the shoulder and pretends to go to sleep. He waits until he hears Steve’s breathing even out before he slips a hand under the waistband of his pajama pants. He convinces himself that he’s only hard because over the past few years, every nerve in his body has turned into a live wire, because a little contact is all it takes to get him going.

It happens again one hot summer night, when they’ve kicked the sheets to the floor and stripped off their shirts. Bucky’s got Steve pinned below him, against the cushions, in the dark of the Barnes’ living room. The air feels humid and heavy, filled with the sounds of their breaths and the metallic whir of a rotating fan. Steve’s skin is warm and clammy; his hair clings to his forehead. Bucky’s face is just inches away, hovering, because even though he knows they can’t stay like this, he doesn’t want to move away, either. Because it feels good – real good – to be pressed up against Steve like this. He feels a hot bead of sweat roll down his spine.

And then, like it’s nothing, Steve leans forward, slipping his wrists out of Bucky’s grip and settling up on his elbows. His lips press against the corner of Bucky’s mouth, and then Steve pulls back, just far enough that Bucky can look him in the face. He looks defiant, and maybe a little triumphant, the way he usually looks after he’s won a good argument. He looks like he’s daring Bucky to say this isn’t what he wants.

For a long moment, Bucky’s brain skips like a record. Steve’s eyes narrow, just a fraction, and he shifts, tilting his hips up into Bucky’s. The hard line of his erection presses against his lower belly. Bucky shudders, overwhelmed by just the suggestion that Steve might want him, and lets go, sinking his fingers into Steve’s sweat-damp hair and pulling his mouth back up to his. 

It goes on for an hour, or maybe two, or maybe forever: the two of them tangled up in each other, kissing and touching and admitting without words that this makes sense, the two of them together like this. Even though it’s too hot, Bucky pulls a sheet over them, just for a little cover. Bucky slides his fingers into Steve’s pants and feels coarse hair and velvety, hot skin. Steve does the same, and the feel of his warm hand, with its spindly artist’s fingers, wrapped around him makes Bucky’s heart clench. Every time a dog barks outside or the house settles, they spring apart, gasping and covered in a wet sheen of sweat. Steve laughs and runs a hand over his face. “Oh, man,” he says, and Bucky knows what he means – that this is dangerous as hell, even more dangerous downstairs from Bucky’s sleeping family. He means that they’re in way over their heads. 

After a little more heavy petting, they both come in their pants – Steve clutching Bucky’s arms and shoulders, and Bucky with a gasp and sigh that feels like an entirely insufficient expression of the bone-shaking fireworks rocketing up and down his spine, making his vision go white and dark. They take turns cleaning up in the Barnes’ white-tiled bathroom. In the mirror over the sink, Bucky sees himself transformed – eyes dark, hair mussed, skin flushed and dotted with love-bites. The sight sends a rush of joy and pride through him, and something else that he doesn’t yet know how to name. Back in the living room, he pulls on his shirt and tells Steve to do the same. It’s too dark to tell, but he’s sure Steve’s as marked up as he is. “Back to back,” Steve whispers, and Bucky nods.

But before they can turn over to fall asleep, carefully positioned so as not to arouse suspicion in the morning, Bucky catches Steve’s hand. 

“Whatever happens,” he starts weakly, because he doesn’t know where a thing like this _goes_ , “you’re never gonna get rid of me. ‘m with you ‘til the end of the line.”

He sees Steve smile through the gloom. His fingers squeeze Bucky’s. 

“I know.”


End file.
